When my eldest was at school he was set on to write a story about being marooned on a desert island. His tale read well for a couple of pages but it ended abruptly: "And then they were saved." I had the unkind feeling he was going to get docked a couple of marks for narrative failings.
With this unfairly critical eye of mine, I now read in the Grauniad that a
Breakthrough in nuclear fusion could mean ‘near-limitless energy’
Oh dear. Are we back into the lands of "electricity-too-cheap-to-meter" and "do-we-believe-this" again? I kind-of assume we'll be there on fusion by, maybe, 2050 ...
I say "we", but I'll be dead and gone. Unless, that is, the same lab has also come up with the Elixir of Life. Well why not? Elon Musk surely isn't too busy to turn his attention to that one?
Often looks to me as though he's been trying a few of the early experimental potions on himself ...
ND
13 comments:
"And there is another point: the positive energy gain reported ignores the 500MJ of energy that was put into the lasers themselves."
Looks like it might still be twenty years away like it was twenty years ago.
I now read in the Grauniad
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No further comment required.....
Just more "gaslighting". Which is appropriate considering the context.
They are just wanting to put out a "good news" story about energy to reassure the masses and to continue to pretend that self-harming energy sanctions aren't a colossal f***-up.
(Fusion may be the future, but that future is still a long way away).
Musk does look weird. Is he big into plastics as well?
Well it's nice that they've managed to generate a positive gain of energy.
I somehow think that turning it into a scalable practical energy source is probably at least a lifetime away.
Entirely coincidentally, it seems that that the type of physics that they are doing on inertial confinement fusion is also useful for research into atomic weapons, and for maintaining a stock of scientists familiar with such research. Who knew?
BiB - also useful for research into atomic weapons, and for maintaining a stock of scientists familiar with such research
there are those - notably the SPRU @ Sussex University - who argue that's the main reason behind Hinkley, Sizewell etc etc. In fact, they'd say it's more than just 'argue' - they reckon they have evidence.
Not twenty, forty. It's always been forty years away. It's a technological invariant. invariant.
"the positive energy gain reported ignores the 500MJ of energy that was put into the lasers themselves": so it was just another lie. When did it become the case that it's wiser to assume that "scientists" are lying than that they're telling the truth?
Main splash story on the BBC webpage.
Where is your faith? WHERE, is your Faith! We believe in the new non fossil religion. We all believe! Where is your faith?
I don't understand why anyone would read the Guardian. I would perhaps trust a report of an exhibition of paintings in that paper, but not any news, scientific or otherwise.
It seems to have been a good newspaper when it was the Manchester Guardian.
Harry Truman remarked that the main danger of growing up on a farm was that you might get kicked on the head by a mule and wake up believing what you read in the papers.
Don
to say its a lie is disingenuous. this is an attempt to turn pure science into something working, the payoff being asymmetric, as is the chance getting it working in our lifetimes.
if we get it working then brilliant, if we dont we carry on struggling by with a bit of gas, coal and solar.
looks like growing a pineapple in Europe the 1600's. just about possible, hugely impressive, massively expensive. maybe over the 200 years we'll get smart enough to do it wherever and whenever we want.
until then its just pure learning to no practical end.
Free and easy energy doesn't fit the true purpose of Greenism. The abolition of Nation and the abolition of Capitalism.
Greenism is attached to Diversity, Inclusion and Equality which is now rammed down the throats of workers, undergraduates and school children at huge cost during times of hitherto unseen austerity.
I cannot believe some of the indoctrination I have had to endure at work - replete with an impossible to pass examination at the end of it and none of the positivity that one is taught to apply on instructor courses.
Let’s get some nuclear fission restarted.
"I cannot believe some of the indoctrination I have had to endure at work - replete with an impossible to pass examination at the end of it "
I was a Green before the term was invented - The Limits To Growth (Club of Rome) and all that. I also studied sociology in the 1970s. So when the 1975 sociology dept. suddenly became the 2015 Human Resources Department, I sailed through whatever they threw at me - because I knew what they wanted me to say.
You'll note that the 40-something HR harridans who'll hire consultants to tell you how racist we all are take very good care to avoid too much diversity when it comes to where to live or where to be on the street at night. They know the score. The people I feel sorry for are the young innocents who believe what they read in the papers and see on the news.
Hannah Graham could have done with a racist uncle or two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Hannah_Graham
Back on topic, I see we're going to ignore Thorium as a safe(r) nuclear technology until China have an unassailable lead and we all have to buy their nukes. No cooling water = no Fukushimas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1
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